How My Lifestyle Business Became a Startup • Hacker News Board

Re: How My Lifestyle Business Became a Startup

#11

Post by clintavo » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 6:25 PM UTC

suking wrote: post #9

clintavo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not technically, although I do have a lot of help. I've managed to build a good "team" by outsourcing as much as possible. I use Rackspace so I don't have to manage servers or do much sysadmin. I work with a freelance programming firm for things I need done that I can't/don't have time to do in house. I've hired freelance writers to produce content for our art blogs (usually artists. Also-I write for those art market…

Nice - you got a business doing 400k+ in revenue per yr, growing nicely. I'm sure someone would be willing to put down a few to several million if you ever sold. Keep it up. Do you market mainly via word of mouth, pay per click, etc.? Seem like word of mouth based on the growth curve.

Is that a buyout offer? ;-)

How I market is another blog post I have planned. I think I've maxed our PPC and it doesn't bring in that many customers but is self-sustaining (in that the revenue off PPC customers is higher than what we're paying in PPC expenses).

Some things I've done very effectively in the past are full-page magazine ads (in artist magazines) and old-school direct mail. I wrote a direct-mail letter and purchased a mailing list of artists and over time sent the promo pieces out with a special discount code to sign up online. Some artists are very non-techy (especially going back to early 2000s), I even toyed with the idea of having a mail-in form to setup the website.

Probably our best marketing has been our free daily art marketing newsletter and blog (http://faso.com/fineartviews/). Our daily email list is over 15,000 and growing and we regularly promote to those artists. I think this is a strategy FAR too many startups ignore. We don't spend most of our time writing articles for other startups, we write articles that are of interest to our CUSTOMERS. That keeps them coming back to our site day after day.

Also - PARTNER with other companies. The gist of my marketing advice is this: Ask yourself, "Who else reaches the same customers I do?" Now partner with those people. For example, we host an online art contest for an art supply company. They promote our service to their customers and visa-versa.

Sorry if this is rough, will clean up and expand these ideas in future blog posts.

Re: How My Lifestyle Business Became a Startup

#12

Post by rosariom » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 6:28 PM UTC

Thanks Clint... I love reading posts like these that emphasize that sustained commitment and hardwork pay off and the fact that it also departs from the traditional build-a-redundant-cool-product group think movement. Too many niches are being ignored and unexplored by us tech-wanna-be or already made entrepreneurs because we keep looking at the cool guys in TechCrunch and other tech sites talking solely about tech industries and cool socially appealing products.

So many businesses/niches are in pain because they do not have software solutions or have to use substandard solutions to get the day to day going. Your advice to go work for another industry is solid and I would even go further and say volunteer on a part-time basis just to make the contacts and see where the problems are. If us tech guys did this more, we would uncover an abundant source of opportunity in need of addressing from people willing to pay to have the pain go away! I am currently looking to do this in the construction industry where some of my friends work.

Great post

Re: How My Lifestyle Business Became a Startup

#13

Post by Prospect » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 6:48 PM UTC

suking wrote: post #10

Prospect wrote: post #8

Great post. We have a similar experience and its nice to read about those of us who didn't start coding / building our companies until late 20s/30s.

Wow - love your 2 sites - would be awesome if you did a similar blog post. Those pictures->canvas things are getting pretty popular at local boutiques.

Thanks!

Re: How My Lifestyle Business Became a Startup

#14

Post by eminkel » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 7:15 PM UTC

Inspiring post. Thank you for the enlightenment. It's always great to hear from single founder companies. I look forward to your future posts.

Re: How My Lifestyle Business Became a Startup

#15

Post by RexM » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 7:37 PM UTC

Great post. I didn't realize it until half way through, but you're in the same space that I'm looking at getting into.

Re: How My Lifestyle Business Became a Startup

#16

Post by acangiano » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 7:39 PM UTC

ngsayjoe wrote: post #4

Very inspirational .. especially from someone who is already in his 30's and running a profitable startup.

Nothing wrong with your comment, but comments like this are so symptomatic of a Silicon Valley mindset. Most entrepreneurs outside the valley become successful well in their 30s and 40s... not at 21. There should be no surprise here.

Re: How My Lifestyle Business Became a Startup

#17

Post by diziet » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 8:08 PM UTC

Very interesting story, it's nice to see someone targeting an interesting niche like this and talking about it.

However, Clint, have you worked a lot on your signup page? For example the 'Get Started Today!' CTA button ( btn-activatenow_b.png ) has text that looks like it is not aliased. The list of features right above it is a bit hard to notice. The testimonials that are linked as 60x52 pictures aren't obvious that they can be clicked on or that they contain testimonials. Also the logo ( http://faso.com/static/images/logo3.png 0 has different background color than the header (#000 vs #333) so it stands out. The top right 'Sign Up!' ( http://faso.com/static/images/btn-signup-head.png ) has a bad font so the 'i' letter is rendered bad, and it also does not have transparent corners (again #000 vs #333) and so the corners stand out.

I know I'm nitpicking a bit, but I think a website meant for artists should get these things right :)

Re: How My Lifestyle Business Became a Startup

#18

Post by typicalrunt » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 8:09 PM UTC

Great article, but it raises something I've been ruminating on for awhile.

It's funny that in the IT industry we need to define ourselves or our businesses so that we stand apart from the rest. I rarely see other industries say that Company X is just a lifestyle business or Company B is a startup. No, they are both businesses. Plain and simple.

A great many businesses would never be able to start operations if they had no profit motive, but in the IT industry it is admired and act as inspiration. What Clint shows is that the old, boring[1], and profitable businesses can still get a bit of attention among the new businesses we see on HN.

[1] I'm using the term loosely and without insult here.

Re: How My Lifestyle Business Became a Startup

#19

Post by willpower101 » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 8:27 PM UTC

I can't help but feel that, while this is inspirational to all those slow starters, there are very obvious places where he could have catalyzed his business much much sooner and without the need to jump in full time or quit his job.

Of course, one would say hind site is 20/20. But for a lot of serial entrepreneurs they'd rather fail fast than drag something out. This post could just have easily been about how someone spent 10 years chasing a different business model that wasn't viable. You just so happened to nail it.

Re: How My Lifestyle Business Became a Startup

#20

Post by clintavo » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 8:54 PM UTC

diziet wrote: post #17

Very interesting story, it's nice to see someone targeting an interesting niche like this and talking about it. However, Clint, have you worked a lot on your signup page? For example the 'Get Started Today!' CTA button ( btn-activatenow_b.png ) has text that looks like it is not aliased. The list of features right above it is a bit hard to notice. The testimonials that are linked as 60x52 pictures aren't obvious that…

Thanks, I do need to learn more about button design.

We A/B test that hero section and selling features didn't perform well so we downplayed them. We've had a lot more signups with other ideas more prominent (Like "Sharing Art Enriches Life"). Believe it or not, the current page is the improved one. I never posted on HN before because I knew I get grilled over how bad our old design was. Maybe I'll get it to "good" status soon......

Edit - I see now the button you refer to. My designer had a nice one that was done properly but it had different text. I made this one to A/B test the current wording, and amazingly it outperformed the original by a wide margin. However, you are correct, we need to see if making the text on that button "correct" (with the current wording) improves things even further.